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DEMON SONG by Cat Adams

DEMON SONG

by Cat Adams

Pub Date: March 1st, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7653-2496-2
Publisher: Tor

Adams' (the joint pseudonym for C.T. Adams and Cathy Clamp) third outing for fearless, supernaturally powered professional bodyguard Celia Graves (Siren Song, 2010, etc.).

In the book's Los Angeles, ordinary folk must coexist with magic, supernatural beings (sirens, vampires, werewolves, you name it), psychic powers, ghosts, warrior priests and modern technology—a preposterously unstable concoction for which Adams compensates, or distracts from, with a richly involving back story. Celia, having discovered in a previous episode that she's part siren, also acquired a progressive vampirism that urges her to chomp necks. This she resists. However, because of a childhood curse, she tends to involve her friends in her adventures, which means they often get psychically or physically damaged. Thanks to her siren heritage, she's a man-magnet, what with sometime boyfriend and mage Bruno DeLuca and new love interest John Creede, another mage. She tends to attract demons. And in an unresolved case, murder victim Vicki Cooper, now a helpful ghost, bequeathed her millions, though even Vicki doesn't know why. Then trouble breaks out at the California State Paranormal Treatment Facility, where mad or bad supernaturals are confined. This eruption of demons, barely contained by Celia, John, Bruno and their allies, is but a harbinger of much worse to come. A rift between the demonic dimension and our own—both opened and then sealed by Celia's royal siren ancestors—is reopening, and its hellraiser-in-chief seems personally to have it in for Celia.

Notwithstanding the absurd backdrop, a warmly involving, action-packed yarn whose heroine is engagingly tough, vulnerable, principled and passionate in equal measure.